bowers v hardwick

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Florida International University *

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Political Science

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Oct 30, 2023

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Name: _Kimberley Fernandez_____________________ Period: 3_______________ Date: __11/19/21_____________________ Case Brief: __Bowers__________________v. ___Hardwick________________ (__1986________) Facts of the Case: Michael Hardwick observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being a charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick challenged the statute’s constitutionality in Federal District Court. Following a ruling that Hardwick failed to state a claim, the court dismissed. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that Georgia’s statute was unconstitutional. Georgia’s Attorney General, Michael J. Bowers, appealed to the Supreme Court and was granted certiorari. Legal Question(s): Does the Constitution confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in consensual sodomy, thereby invalidating the laws of many states which make such conduct illegal? Decision/Majority Opinion: The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. Justice Byron White argued that the Court has acted to protect rights not easily identifiable in the Constitution only when those rights are “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” (Palko v Connecticut, 1937) or when they are “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition” (Griswold v Connecticut. 1965). The Court held that the right to commit sodomy did not meet either of these standards. White feared that guaranteeing a right to sodomy would be the product of “judge-made constitutional law” and send the Court down the road of illegitimacy. Dissenting Opinion: In his dissenting opinion, Justice Harry A. Blackmun accused the majority of badly distorting the central issue of the case (as well as those of the relevant precedents) by focusing on overt behavior, particularly “homosexual activity”, rather than on underlying principles. Case Brief: _Bowers___________________v. _Hardwick__________________ (_1986_______) Evaluation of Constitutional Significance

Short-Term Consequences - What was the immediate outcome? In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not protect the right of gay adults to engage in private, consensual sodomy. Long-Term Consequences - How did this decision change the interpretation of the Constitution? Bowers v. Hardwick , 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual sodomy and heterosexual sodomy. This case was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas , though the statute had already been struck down by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 1998.

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